Northrop Grumman is working under a 78.5 million dollar contractwith the Army's Robotics and Unmanned Sensors Product Office atAberdeen Proving Grounds, to provide a total of 33 STARLite radarsystems between now and April 2011.

The radar deliveries followed a compressed 18 monthpost-contract award schedule that included the successful completion ofa rigorous battery of qualification tests of the radar as well asindependent performance verification tests conducted by the Army's Testand Evaluation Center at the Yuma Proving Grounds, AZ.

"STARLite passed customer-mandated reliability, operational andenvironmental qualification tests, including 1,200 hours of operationaltesting without a single hardware failure," said Pat Newby, vicepresident of Northrop Grumman's Land and Self Protection SystemsDivision. "The demonstrated high-reliability of STARLite will helpensure our warfighters have this significant improvement insurveillance capability readily available to them in theatre, whenneeded, in the war against terrorism."

Each STARLite radar features both SAR and GMTI capabilities andcomes equipped with a complete software package for interfacing withthe U.S. Army One Common Ground Station, enabling easy operator controlof the SAR maps and ground moving target detection indication onstandard Army maps. The AN/ZPY-1 leverages Northrop Grumman'sexperience in creating the proven Tactical Endurance Synthetic ApertureRadar and the Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Radar.